Girl misses transplant after airlift failure

A 14-YEAR-OLD Leitrim girl missed a liver transplant at the weekend because of a failure by State agencies to arrange for her to be airlifted to a London hospital on time.

The Health Service Executive and the Department of Transport gave different accounts last night of when the Coast Guard was first informed that an airlift was needed.

Maedhbh McGivern from Ballinamore was about to board a Coast Guard helicopter at Strandhill airport in Co Sligo on Saturday night when she and her parents, Joe and Assumpta, were informed they would not make it to King’s College Hospital London before the 2am deadline yesterday morning.

The family had been informed by the hospital that the transplant would need to take place quickly because the donation liver belonged to a “non-breathing” donor.

In a statement last night the HSE said that it contacted the Coast Guard at “20.08hrs” on Saturday to request an aircraft “on a priority level 1 call. The Coast Guard advised that they had no aircraft available,” it said.

At “approximately 10pm” the Coast Guard contacted them to say an aircraft was available in Sligo and the patient should be brought there. The HSE statement continued that when the McGivern family arrived in Sligo “they were advised by the Coast Guard crew that the flight time would be up to 4 hours”. This was relayed to the London hospital, which “advised that this would be outside of the time window available to carry out the surgery”.

However, a statement from the Department of Transport last night said the Coast Guard received the request from HSE Ambulance Control at the later time of “20:50pm” on Saturday. This was 42 minutes later than the HSE said it first contacted them.

The department said it “tasked the Sligo-based Coast Guard helicopter to carry out the mission . . . Journey time from Sligo airport to Heathrow is approximately 3.5 hours”. At “22:49pm” the Coast Guard was told the airlift had been cancelled “as the shelf-life of the donor liver was exceeded, taking into account the travel time”.

Coast Guard crew at Sligo airport told the McGivern family they had been available all evening, and that no one had contacted them.